Gartner’s top 10 strategy technology trends have the potential for significant impact on organizations in the next three years. While this doesn’t mean adoption and investment in all of the trends will occur at the same rate, companies should make deliberate decisions about them during the next two years. The trends cover three themes: the merging of the real and virtual worlds, the advent of intelligence everywhere, and the technology impact of the digital business shift.

Merging Real and Virtual Worlds

Computing EverywhereAs mobile devices continue to proliferate, Gartner predicts an increased emphasis on serving the needs of the mobile user in diverse contexts and environments, as opposed to focusing on devices alone.

The Internet of ThingsThe combination of data streams and services created by digitizing everything creates four basic usage models — Manage, Monetize, Operate and Extend.

3D Printing3D printing will reach a tipping point over the next three years as the market for relatively low-cost 3D printing devices continues to grow rapidly and industrial use expands significantly.

Context-Rich Systems Ubiquitous embedded intelligence combined with pervasive analytics will drive the development of systems that are alert to their surroundings and able to respond appropriately.

Smart Machines Prototype autonomous vehicles, advanced robots, virtual personal assistants and smart advisors already exist and will evolve rapidly, ushering in a new age of machine helpers. The smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT.

Cloud/Client Computing The convergence of cloud and mobile computing will continue to promote the growth of centrally coordinated applications that can be delivered to any device.

Software-Defined Applications and Infrastructure Agile programming of everything from applications to basic infrastructure is essential to enable organizations to deliver the flexibility required to make the digital business work.

Web-Scale IT Web-scale IT is a pattern of global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT setting. More organizations will begin thinking, acting and building applications and infrastructure like Web giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook.

Risk-Based Security and Self-Protection All roads to the digital future lead through security. However, in a digital business world, security cannot be a roadblock that stops all progress. Organizations will increasingly recognize that it is not possible to provide a 100 percent secured environment. Once organizations acknowledge that, they can begin to apply more-sophisticated risk assessment and mitigation tools.

David W. Cearley is a vice president and Gartner Fellow at Gartner, and he is speaking about the top technology trends at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2014.